First I would like to wave hello to everybody on this list and
introduce myself. My name is Fran Rodríguez, and I'm finishing my
degree in informatics in Darmstadt, Germany. I have been using Kubuntu
since a pair of months, and I discovered the KDE world just a little
time before using this distribution (SuSE running a Window Maker
desktop before).

On the sencond place I would like to apologize, because I don't know
if this is the right place to drop this lines which came to my mind
when I knew about the Plasma project. It seemed to be the right place,
though (as Plasma claims to reinvent the desktop) - but there you go,
anyway.

Lately I have been a little bit concerned about the usability. In
fact, this excitement I feel about KDE right now comes from the
direction that KDE is taking. I have read the KDE design guidelines
and I have observed rising projects like Plasma, and I really like the
plans for the future. It seems that now someone is thinking in the
user, in the interface between machine and human; that someone is
trying to remove that old stereotype that the linux projects are all
complicated and unusable. I think redesigning the desktop concept is a
big step towards an uniform operative system, and that's why I think a
project like plasma is so important.

I have some doubts (or suggestions, it depends on how many lines have
been already written about this) concerning two points of the desktop:
the KDE menu and the system notifications.

Concerning the KDE menu, I have always thought it is way too crowd and
untidy. No matter how you try to order it, it will keep on being
complicated, anyway (it seems the Kubuntu guys reduced the number of
subfolders, but I still find hard to find Amarok sometimes). Then I
saw the application launcher that comes with Baghira, and I was simply
stunned. I had never worked with a Mac, so I had never seen a
search-oriented launcher. The question is, will this application
launcher replace the Kmenu?

From the usability point of view, it is a waste of time to look for an
item called "Amarok" in a menu, when you know perfectly the name and
you could access it with three keys. Not to mention when you want to
"listen to music" and you don't know which application does such a
thing in your system. The search-oriented launcher simply rocks. And
the fact that you have a special place in your system to look for
applications (which is a special entity in your system) makes your
life simpler and happier, and makes you become a better person and
makes your neighbours be much nicer :D. Ok, no joke: simple, fast,
easy: it is just perfect.

As for the other point, I have never read a word that it goes into
Plasma, and seems important to me: the system notifications. Right now
we have a "mailbox" to send all the system notifications, which is
called Knotify. The problem is knotify looks poor and not very
powerful. Applications can ask for pop-up notifications, but from the
user point of view, there is no control on how this notifications are
managed (place in which they appear, duration...)

This looks like an essential point on the desktop environment to me.
And id turns more and more important everyday, as the standard users
get involved with technologies such as the instant messaging or the
e-mail, and use them everyday. The notifications should be homogeneous
and configurable, so you receive all that "flash information" in a way
that it is easily assimilated.

Is Knotify getting into Plasma? The pop-up notification area could be
perfectly one of those extenders, and all the pop-ups in the system
could be configured at once. We would have the new-message Kopete
notifications and the Kmail informational messages about our mailboxes
all together, integrated in our desktop (not just as a dirty and ugly
pop-up appearing somewhere in our screen) and highly configurable.

I have more ideas and questions, concerning the launchers and the
taskbar (my ideas are quite radical about the latter), but first I
don't know if they go here, and second, this was way too long for an
introductory e-mail... Thank you all for your time (and patience if
you are still reading :D).

Cheers,

Fran.

--
Francisco Joaquín Rodríguez Prados
Fachbereich Informatik,
Fachhochschule Darmstadt,
Darmstadt, Germany
E-mail: prados@gmail.com
JID: franqui@jabber.dk
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